America has secretly built a new central command center for its Iraq offensive
in the Eritrean port of Assab. The new facility also houses jumping off bases
for the US air force and navy. While way off the beaten track, Assab has the
great advantage of being positioned strategically near the Bab el Mandeb Straits
linking the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and the mouth of Persian Gulf. The dusty
streets of this East African corner have recently filled with white American
vans dashing around without license plates but recognizable as military vehicles
from their sprouting antennae. In Assabs harbor, docks and storage facilities
have been renovated and closed off as a US military zone. Rooftop aerials and
satellite dishes mark out a major US command post.
Just to the north of Assab, the Americans have whipped a small local airport
into the largest air base in the Horn of Africa, partly compensating for the
sophisticated Prince Sultan air force base denied them in Saudi Arabia. Its
new, wide runways can cater to heavy bombers, transports and fighter-bombers
taking off for missions against any target in southern Iraq or the Baghdad area
with the help of in-air fuel feeds.

Still further to the north, another cluster of US air and naval bases has risen
on the Dalak archipelago on the western side of the Red Sea, across from Saudi
Arabias Farasan Islands.

The US presence on Dalak gives it control of the full length of the Red Sea
and the eastern approaches to the Suez Canal and the Sinai Peninsula, linking
up with the American base at Sharm el Sheikh. From Dalak, the US air force reach
extends to any point in Iraq - from Baghdad to the northern oil cities of Kirkuk
and Mosul.

The largest concentration of US bases is located on the big island of Dalak
Dist; some installations have gone up in the small eastern town of Deba Alawa
and a town on the western side of the island of Jamil. In these locations, the
US forces can avail themselves of Soviet port facilities, landing strips, headquarters
and structures built there in the 1970s when the USSR maintained a large naval
presence on the archipelago; later, the Israeli navy and air force used the
sites as their forward base in the Red Sea.
Northern Iraq, including its oil cities, will be under the purview of US bases
in southern Turkey and Tbilisi, Georgia. The new Red Sea bases, along with American
aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean, will round off
US coverage of all Iraqi airspace.

This blanket air control does not imply Americas intention of placing
the brunt of its offensive on air assault, on the pattern of the 1991 Gulf War
and the Afghanistan campaign, where US air force planes dropped tons of ordnance,
missiles and bunker-busting bombs. For the present, the plan is to employ the
air force mainly as cover for American ground invasion forces, most of whom
will be detached from US Oceania bases.

Our military sources describe the present plan as being for a US-UK force of
up to 75,000 troops attacking in three synchronous bridgeheads. The overall
strategy is for the US military to operate from inside Iraq - unlike the doctrine
followed in Afghanistan, where the US army strikes from outside bases. A large
contingent of engineering units is standing by in Kuwait and Qatar ready to
move in and prepare Iraqi installations such as H-3, H-4 and the massive al-Baghdadi
air base for the influx of US warplanes and troops.